Gluten-Free Cooking Made Easy by Susan Bell

What happens when you give six women/families with gluten allergies copies of Gluten-Free Cooking Made Easy: Delicious Recipes for Everyone by Susan Bell? Six very happy tummies.

Compliments of Walnut Springs, my friends and I were able to taste-test this new cookbook and I have to say with great pleasure that the cookbook was a resounding success! Hurray Susan Bell and Walnut Springs Press!

So let’s get right to the point. The food was yummy, we found a few typos and slip ups in the ingredient lists, but on the whole we were extremely pleased with the recipes and the resulting fabulous dishes. Hands down winners? The Best Waffles and the Angel Food Cake. Mmmmmmmmm. For people who normally have to go without or eat cardboard, need I say more?

What else is there to like? It isn’t just baked goods. (Okay, I know my description above kind of sounded that way, but I promise it’s full of a variety of great dishes.) If we had to tear ourselves away from the bread products, the stir fry, fajitias, cheesy halibut, creamy ramono chicken, taco soup, sweet pear pork chops and chicken pasta salad also got happy nods of approval.

Gluten-Free Cooking Made Easy: Delicious Recipes for Everyone is a great introduction to the weird world of gluten-free living. The food is wonderful and fairly easy to make. Having a resource like this can make things a little less discouraging. One woman used it as a reference to go through all her “old” family favorites and figure out how to easily adjust them for her daughter-in-law’s diet restrictions. Another just simply threw out all of her old cookbooks she was selectively sifting through and proclaimed Gluten-Free Cooking Made Easy: Delicious Recipes for Everyone to be the only cookbook she needs or uses. It really can feed the whole family without the bread-tolerant members even noticing a difference. Heck, my autistic son gobbled down the chocolate chip cookies without blinking and believe me, it’s very hard to pull one over on him!

I have to admit when I first looked through the recipes I was a little discouraged. The ingredient lists to duplicate a wheat flour can feel a little daunting. I’m a very lazy cook, so it might not bother (and didn’t seem to) anyone else. What I’ve found though, is the recipes are usually simple enough outside of the ingredients that I can kind of do a “make a mix” approach with the flour ingredients. I simply measure twice, cook one set of ingredients and the other set of ingredients in a Ziploc bag so it’s a little easier the next time I’m craving that awesome angel food cake. Did I mention we really liked the angel food cake? And the waffles? And the zucchini muffins? And the blueberry muffins? And the rice bread?

Hungry yet? Yep, me too. So, if you’ll excuse me I haven’t gotten a chance to try the brownie recipe yet and I can hear it calling to me.

I Can’t Believe It’s Food Storage by Crystal Godfrey

Here’s a fun new food storage recipe book. Wait! Wait! Before you flip to another blog let me explain why. See, I know a few of those happy homemaker women whose wheat grinder has a place of honor in their kitchen and everything they make is totally healthy and just a little bit . . . weird.

Admit it. You know a few of them, too. They’re the ladies who actually have their year, two year, whatever supply of food, bake their own bread every day and know how to can anything that doesn’t walk and talk. They make the rest of us (who have never made a cake without the little cardboard box- I mean really, why should you?) feel just a little bit bad. Plus, we know for sure our children would never stand for wheat berry skillet dinner in place of their hamburger helper. It just ain’t going to happen. Food storage just gets a bad rap, commandment or not.

So, why would I be excited about I Can’t Believe It’s Food Storage by Crystal Godfrey? Because the very first recipe that caught my eye was for Blender Wheat Pancakes. See, Crystal’s recipe called for simply dump all the ingredients (including the whole wheat grain) into a blender, mix and go. Yep. This was a girl who knew how to speak my language.

I don’t own a wheat grinder. I’d never take the time to use it I did, plus I’d never clean up the mess after using it. So, I dutifully buy sacks of whole grain flour at the store and ignore the cans of wheat in my basement. But, here was someone telling me it didn’t matter. I could still use that darn wheat without giving myself nightmares. I liked her all ready. J Yes, they are still whole wheat pancakes and if your family can’t stomach a completely whole wheat breakfast this isn’t the place to start getting them used to it. But hey, just having the option alone made me feel a world better about all those #10 cans taking up space in my basement.

Her no-stress approach to figuring out what really makes sense to store and how to use it every day really does earn Crystal her nickname as the “Rock Star of Food Storage”. I spent several weeks testing about half the recipes in I Can’t Believe It’s Food Storage. (My family looked at me funny the whole time. They’re not used to seeing mom in the kitchen that much.) I had a great time reading through all the helpful, normal hints that Crystal gives as well as trying out the recipes and getting to taste-test what I’d created.

Yes, I even broke out a can of whole egg powder my mother-in-law gave me yyyeeeaaaars ago for the occasion. Guess what? They worked! Admittedly, the recipe the can gave to equal one egg was different than what Crystal gave. She gave a formula for medium, large and extra-large eggs and I just used whatever amount she told me to in the recipe. I think I’d probably have to do some more experimenting with my own favorite recipes to make sure I’d get it right. But, then again, given the weird way I cook all ready it might not make any difference.

So, here’s my overall assessment: Not bad.

There are a lot of recipes that you really won’t be able to tell you’ve used food storage in and very few that have a cringe factor. Yes, the timeless pinto bean fudge is in there. Still haven’t gotten up the nerve to try it yet. But, that’s actually the rarity. You’ll find recipes for awesome versions of hamburger helper, bean dip, hot fudge sauce, German chocolate brownies, super easy white sauce, you name it. There wasn’t anything that I shook my head at and said, “Nope, sorry too complicated, too much work.” My current favorite comfort food has become her recipe for chocolate pudding—love it warm with whipped cream.

If you read my review of the “Sneaky” cookbooks, Crystal does favor some of these methods to make your recipes cheaper and healthier, but they really aren’t bad. Well, except maybe that fudge thing. My family ate things with beans hidden in them that I’d never dared try before. She also converted me to the ways of powdered milk use. No, I haven’t had the nerve to try her recipe for a drinkable version, but she has made it totally easy for me to use it in my cooking and never know the difference. That by itself has been a huge pocketbook saver.

I did notice a smattering of typos that could effect your cooking if you’re not paying attention, but nothing really horrific. It’s still a place I’d recommend going if you want someone down-to-earth to help you ease into the scary world of food storage. Pick up a copy. Thus saith the Alison. :)

In fact, if you enter this contest: http://jdp-news.blogspot.com/2009/05/welcome-to-our-summer-treasure-hunt-dig.html you could win a copy of I Can’t Believe It’s Food Storage for yourself. A little bird told me that Crystal will be doing other giveaways on her website as well. I highly recommend checking her site often, anyway. There is a ton of very useful stuff to glean right there and it will give you a pretty good idea if I Can’t Believe It’s Food Storage would work for you as well.

Crystal was also recently featured in the Provo Daily Herald http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/306512/149/. She’s is very willing to do classes and presentations if you live in her area. You can contact her at everydayfoodstorage@gmail.com to arrange those. She is also available for blog tours and to be a guest blogger. Crystal also teaches food storage cooking classes at the Lehi Macey’s grocery store.

Alison's Nutritious Cookbook Challenge

I had been eyeing a new cookbook I wanted to try for quite some time when I learned that there was actually some controversy surrounding it. (Note: I did not research the validity of the information I received, to me it didn’t matter from that standpoint- it just raised an interesting question for me to explore.) Apparently, two cookbooks built on the same premise came out at almost the same time. It appears that a publisher had actually rejected one title, then accepted the other a month or so later. From the publishing standpoint there are a lot of reasons this may have happened and really, that’s just business. But the whole thing made me curious so I picked up copies of both books and began experimenting.

I began cooking and taste-testing recipes from both Deceptively Delicious and The Sneaky Chef: How to Cheat On Your Man (In the Kitchen!). In case you can’t tell from the names, the premise of both books is basically sneaking “hidden” servings of vegetables (and other healthy ingredients) into your food to improve your family’s health, etc. You basically create purees of the vegetables and cook them into your foods.

For basic concepts I liked Deceptively Delicious’ approach to purees better than The Sneaky Chef, simply because DD’s purees were one ingredient. The recipe might call for a couple of purees but they’d read “½ cup sweet potato puree” and “½ cup carrot puree”, or whatever. I also preferred the spiral binding that let the cookbook open fully and stay on the page I wanted to read, rather than the traditional binding of The Sneaky Chef.

The Sneaky Chef, on the other hand, mixed up her veggies. So, what you saw in the recipe was “½ cup purple puree” and you had to refer back to the puree recipes to find out exactly what was in purple puree. That’s not a problem if that’s all you do, but I’d prefer to make single ingredient purees whenever I had a veggie I needed to use up, rather than having to make sure I had all the ingredients for my “orange puree” whenever I needed to stock my puree freezer. This can really add to your food bill otherwise. (Spinach may be cheap but it takes a lot to make a ½ cup of puree, you’re better off just learning to eat it if your not using up left-overs before they go bad or buying in greatly discounted bulk.) Also, Sneaky Chef tended to use a lot of ingredients that I choose not to use as an LDS cook. I would have loved to do more direct comparison of recipes that both cookbooks featured, but I don’t cook with coffee grounds and red wine.

The recipes in Deceptively Delicious also tend to be more basic “family” recipes. The Sneaky Chef tends to cater to more “grown-up” tastes. (Last minute note: I did not know when I was doing my comparisons that there is actually a “kid’s meals” book by Sneak Chef as well. It didn’t come up on my library searches. This does explain the weird little label on the book that said "Author of The Sneaky Chef" though. At the time I was mighty confused and did a second search under her name: nothing. Curses. If you’ve used the kid version let me know what you thought.)

One last thing I noticed: for books that tout being healthier (which they do appear to be) neither cookbook gives thorough nutritional information. The Sneaky Chef is better at this part but all she does is put bubbles touting “Fiber” or “Omega 3” or whatever. No specifics. I find this very weird.

So, how did the food taste? Um, well mostly okay. I found very few recipes (at least from the ones I tried) that carried a serious yuck factor, but none that just shouted, “this is awesome!” I guess my suggestion would be to choose the one or two foods from the cookbook that most appeals to you, but you don’t already have a favorite recipe for (you’ll just be disappointed that way) and give it a try. This is definitely a case where using the cookbooks can help improve your nutrition and it’s certainly worth trying but you’re better off with the “try before you buy” method in this case. Borrow these from your library before you run out to the bookstore.

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The Book Lover’s Cookbook by Shaunda Kennedy Wenger and Janet Kay Jensen

I was excited to see this fun cookbook become available in a paperback version. Though hardbound is more durable, I could only wistfully check it out of the library from time to time rather than afford the hardbound price. When I discovered the release of the less expensive version it was in my hand very quickly.

Have you ever wanted to curl up in a comfortable chair and read a cookbook from beginning to end? Well, this is one time you definitely will want to. Really, I’m not that weird. The Book Lover’s Cookbook by Shaunda Kennedy Wenger and Janet Kay Jensen is a little different than reading that red and white checked cookbook you got at your bridal shower and think you can’t get rid of. Take a plate of your favorite reading munchies, get comfortable and get ready to be inspired.

The Book Lover’s Cookbook is part recipe book and part a walk down a literary memory lane. Within its covers you’ll find passages from a wide variety of books, quotes from different authors and, oh by the way, recipes that have been derived and inspired by those books. It’s a veritable feast of both words and food. Some of the recipes are a bit to complicated or extravagant for my basic and easily distracted personality but there is enough variety to satisfy anyone’s tummy rumblings. You’ll find recipes for every meal and course imaginable, many of which will become favorites.

To give you a “taste” (ha! I crack myself up sometimes) of the types of yummy recipes you’ll find in The Book Lover’s Cookbook, here are a few of my personal favorites:

Stack of Pancakes— from The Story of Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman

A Real Man’s Quiche— from Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche by Bruce Feirstein

Macaroni and Cheese—from A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

New Road Chicken Pies (a.k.a. Turnovers)—from Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now by Maya Angleou

Mother’s Chocolate Pecan Pie – from Errands by Judith Guest

and

Sugar and Spice Cake—from Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

I have to confess, however, that I failed miserably when I tried making “Pooh’s Honey Kisses”, but I don’t think that was really a recipe problem. I’m just sadly lacking in candy-making genes. (Really. I can’t even make Rice Crispy Treats and I only get No-bake cookies right about half the time.)

As you can tell by my list, my tastes lean toward simple and traditional, but you’ll find more distinguished dishes as well. For example:

Good Times Roasted Garlic Chicken with Mushroom and Black Olive Stuffing—from Even the Stars Look Lonesome by Maya Angelou

(Stuffed Pig Stomach with) Oyster Filling—from “The Walrus and the Carpenter” by Lewis Carroll

Tianjin Dumplings—from Falling Leaves: The True Story of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter by Adeline Yen Mah

Emma’s Curried Shrimp with Snow Peas and Apples—from The Saving Graces by Patricia Gaffney

Matanni’s Butternut Squash and Apple Cider Soup—from Icy Sparks by Gwyn Hyman Rubio

and

Turkish Delight— from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis

Are you hungry yet? It doesn’t matter if that hunger is for food or the written word, go get a copy of The Book Lover’s Cookbook by Shaunda Kennedy Wenger and Janet Kay Jensen and you can make it all better. ;)

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